Interview on “The Games Machine”
18 February 2010I recently found out that an interview I had with Gianluca Masina was published on the November 2009 issue of the Italian magazine “The Games Machine”.
In the interview, which also includes comments from Mr. Simon Rozner, we talk about the M-EDGE project, which I started when I was in NYP and for which I was the Principal Investigator from its official beginning in August 2007 till the day when I left NYP in July 2009.
Even though I am not really involved anymore, the project is still in progress and new games are going to be developed by NYP on my original engine, so keep checking their website out (http://www.gamescreation.org/medge)!
“On the way to fun” officially announced!
20 January 2010I just saw that “On the Way to Fun” has been officially announced on AK Peters website!
http://www.akpeters.com/product.asp?ProdCode=5824
The release is planned for April and retail price set to $29.00. I can’t wait to see it!
Game Over: a new book project
8 January 2010As “On the way to Fun” is going to be released in a few months by AKPeters, I started working on a new project: “Game Over”, a book on the history of videogames and home computers.
I guess my love for old/retro games has already been apparent throughout my blog and, actually, I have been thinking of writing such a book since a few years by now but the real motivation came just a few months ago when I was assigned to teach the Game History classes here at DigiPen Singapore.
Obviously, I read quite a few texts on the subject in the past but, once I started having an even deeper look at the available literature, I still didn’t really find any single text to base my course upon and wholeheartedly recommend to my students: some books are designed as luscious coffee table items, with many beautiful color pictures but in a big and heavy format not very practical for serious study work. Others, on the other hand, are covering only the history of a specific company or a subset of games and genres.
What I aim at, instead, is something comprehensive yet agile, able to outline the history of both home computers and game machines, including the most influential and innovative games while also introducing some of the pioneers to whom all of us have a great debt towards. Last but not least, I want it to be easy and entertaining to read so as to serve not only as a book to be studied but also to be enjoyed by a broad range of people for a quick reading anywhere: on the bus or train, whether on the way to school or for a relaxing vacation.
I will keep track of my progress on these pages… wish me good luck! 
Happy new year!!
My 2009 Best Videogame Award
26 December 2009And here we go for another year review! Though this was a very tough year, still many great games were published (overall, 1,099 games were released this year, up from 1,092 in 2008) and, despite an overall industry decline, I think things still look good with another exciting year ahead.
Anyway, these were the games that impressed me most this past year:
Best Artwork: Assassin’s Creed 2 (Ubisoft)
Best Sound Design: Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward/Activision)
Best Indie Game: Trine (FrozenByte)
Most Innovative/Fun Game Experience: Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo)
Best Handheld Game: grand theft auto: chinatown wars (Rockstar Games)
Robbie’s Best Game Award 2009: Assassin’s Creed 2
Special Mentions:
PC/Console:
Dragon Age: Origins (Bioware/EA)
Handheld:
Scribblenauts (5th Cell)
Retro Game Challenge (XSeed Games)
Indie:
Plants vs. Zombie (PopCap)
This year I also thought of adding a new award for the Best Hardware product (looking forward to Microsoft’s Natal and Sony’s Wand here 
)
Best Hardware Product: GP2Wiz Handheld Console (GP Holdings, Korea)
All best wishes for a merry Christmas and a great 2010 to everyone!
“On the Way to Fun” on AKPeters!
2 December 2009I am very happy to announce that my book “On the Way to Fun” is going to be published by AKPeters and due in early March 2010 (in time for GDC!). I can’t wait to see it ready and to start teaching the game analysis framework illustrated there in my upcoming classes at DigiPen!
PSP + DS = Wiz ?
2 November 2009I have recently bought a new handheld console: a GP2XWiz….. What?? Yeah, an “open source” Linux-based model by a Korean company named GPHoldings which I had a chance to see while in Seoul for KGC. (Check http://www.gp2xwiz.com/ )
I am not ashamed to say that it is the handheld I’m playing most now as it has all the best features of the other consoles (including touch screen) and I can finally play all my old games (yeah, I’m a big retro games buff, as you probably already know!) plus homebrew apps without the need to do any “unofficial” mod which always gets in the way of the new firmware upgrades that Sony and Nintendo keep releasing.
Besides, I think this platform has some good potential for becoming an interesting “blue ocean” for indie developers if GPHoldings succeeds in expanding its reach a little bit further and make it more widely known with proper marketing. The amount of freeware games/apps is constantly growing and, together with excellent media capabilities (movies, music, ebooks…) it can make this a viable platform driven by an enthusiastic user community where low cost software in a $1-$5 range can be successful (a bit like what happened on the iPhone… done the proper proportions, of course :P).
Back from KGC09
16 October 2009Like last year, I enjoyed this conference in Seoul really very much. Not only it is the biggest in Asia in terms of quantity (7 parallel tracks for 3 days!) but, in my opinion, it is also the one that offers the highest variety and quality across all game related disciplines. Unfortunately not all korean sessions were translated into English but the organizers are doing a great effort year over year to make the event more and more international, and the results are constantly improving.
I’m also very happy for the feedback I received on my session on fun and retro games, where I introduced for the first time some of the concepts I wrote in the book “On the way to Fun” (which is hopefully going to be published soon… stay tuned!): the hall was very crowded with people standing up all around as there were not enough seats and all comments/impressions were quite favorable. The slides are available for download in the Slides page
I can’t wait for the next edition in 2010!
traits of “true” game developers…
22 August 2009(humorous post 
)
You are a “true” game developer if:
- You named your son Max and your daughter Maya (or Mario and Luigi if you have two boys :P)
- You get easily excited by surfing ”Gamasutra”
- Before leaving home, you check your route by using the A* alghorithm
Just came out with this sort of joke today on the bus Feel free to add new “traits” in the comments!
On the way to fun
16 August 2009During the last couple of months I spent almost all my free time writing a small book on emotions and game design, titled “On the way to Fun: an Emotion based approach to successful Game Design”.
In it, I’m outlining the most relevant basic emotions and instinct in games and how they can interact with each other to provide exciting and immersive gaming experiences. I formalized these concept in a model which I decided to name the “6-11 Framework” after the number of emotions and instincts considered, respectively(luckily I included only 6 emotions and not 7 otherwise I might have had trademark infringement problems! :P) and used it to analyze a set of case studies consisting of retro games dating back from 1971 till 1988 and modern successful Indie productions to show how all of them were able to provide fun experiences even without the complexities of modern AAA titles.
I am actually quite happy about the final result and I started submitting it to possible publishers: let’s see if someone is interested. In the meantime, I also proposed a few talks based on this work to upcoming conferences.
Cheers!
New job! And new invitation to KGC
11 August 2009This month I just left my academic position at NYP and joined DigiPen as an Assistant Professor at the Dept. of Game Software Design and Production!
I am quite excited for this new position where I’ll teach different subjects ranging from computer architecture, game production and design etc. and I am sure the upcoming months will be very busy and very rewarding.
I also got the news that my lecture titled “Retro Games Exposed: Evergreen hints and tips to design Fun Games” has been accepted for the Korea Games Conference 09 and I was invited to go there this October! It will be really great to go back as last year KGC was one of the best organized and most interesting gaming conferences I ever attended.
